'Flying Housewife' wins again in London 'Flying Housewife' wins again in London CHRIS LEHOURITES Pin it Share FILE - This Aug. 4, 1948 file photo shows Fanny Blankers-Koen, of Netherlands, crossing the finish line of the 80-meter hurdle final of the 1948 Olympic Games at Wembley Stadium in London. Blankers-Koen, who was one of the biggest stars of the 1948 London Olympics, was originally left off a new map of the London Underground dedicated to past Olympians, prompting criticism from her homeland. But on Wednesday, April 4, 2012, the track star known as the "Flying Housewife" was added to the list for future prints. (AP Photo/File) More LONDON (AP) — The "Flying Housewife" has landed a subway stop in London after all. Fanny Blankers-Koen, a Dutchwoman who was one of the biggest stars of the 1948 London Olympics, was originally left off a new map of the London Underground dedicated to past Olympians, prompting criticism from her homeland.

But on Wednesday, the track star known as the "Flying Housewife" was added to the list for future prints. "We apologize if any offense has been caused by the omission of Fanny Blankers-Koen, who was clearly a remarkable athlete," Transport for London marketing director Chris Macleod said in a statement. "We are speaking to the publisher to ensure that she features in the next reprint of the map." To make room for Blankers-Koen, who died in 2004, running rivals Zola Budd and Mary Decker will be put together into one station instead of holding separate stops, the TFL said. The Olympic Legends Map, which is being sold as a poster by Transport for London, changed the names of 361 London subway and railway stations, honoring greats like Jesse Owens, Nadia Comaneci and Mark Spitz. It includes a variety of Olympians from various sports. Blankers-Koen won gold in the 100 meters, 200, 80 hurdles and 4x100 relay at the London Games and was chosen "Female Athlete of the Century" by the IAAF in 1999.

She was left off the first edition of the map, which prompted a formal complaint from the Dutch athletics federation. It wrote to London organizing committee leader Sebastian Coe to get Blankers-Koen added to the map. "Fanny Blankers-Koen had to be included in this tribute, so it is a great gesture," Dutch Athletics Federation general secretary Rien van Haperen told The Associated Press. "It shows class they found a fitting solution. ... We understand it was a painful mistake." The map was designed by Alex Trickett and David Brooks. "We always intended to select the right people for this map, and we spent a lot of time trying to do that," Trickett told the AP. "The absence of Fanny Blankers-Koen was basically just a pure administrative error on our part. "She had been on our short list — which wasn't so short, it was actually 500 or 600 athletes long — but she was on it and she was on it in red, which meant she was a must to be on the map." Track stars make up a good part of the map, running from west to east and all around the center of the city.

With Coe, Carl Lewis, Maria Mutola and Emil Zatopek, most of the all-time greats are represented. Swimmers, boxers and basketball stars also make up a large portion of the map. The station closet to the Olympic Stadium, Stratford, is named "Michael Phelps" on the legends map. Other Americans with subway stops include Cassius Clay, the original name of boxing great Muhammad Ali, Mia Hamm, LeBron James, Magic Johnson, Sheryl Swoopes and Venus Williams. There is even room for "renowned athletes famous for not winning a medal." Falling under that category are Decker and Budd, the runners who got tangled in the 3,000-meter final at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. But Roger Bannister, who became the first man to run the mile in under four minutes in 1954, didn't make the cut despite finishing fourth in the 1,500 two years earlier at the Helsinki Olympics. "He is not on the map for a good reason," Trickett said. "He is undoubtedly a British icon, he is a sporting icon for Britain, but his reputation was made outside the Olympics. ...

He was an Olympian, but he didn't excel there." ___ Athletics: 'Flying Housewife' changed Olympic perceptions - Telegraph Athletics: 'Flying Housewife' changed Olympic perceptions By David Miller 12:01AM GMT 26 Jan 2004 Fanny Blankers-Koen, one of the foremost competitors in the history of the Olympic Games, died in Holland at the age of 85 yesterday. The impact of this Dutch athlete on the Games and upon track and field was the greater for two factors. Firstly, Nazi occupation interrupted the prime of her career, and secondly, when she appeared at the Games in London in 1948 she was already 30 and the mother of two children. In the middle of the 20th century motherhood was widely regarded as almost a disqualification from athletic excellence, and her unparalleled achievement of four gold medals stunned not only the British but a worldwide audience. Blankers-Koen was already the creator of seven world records, though a largely uninformed British public were unaware of this background. Her four victories in nine days, often in foul weather, changed social attitudes.

Only in the 80 metres hurdles was she seriously challenged - by Britain's favourite woman athlete Maureen Gardner. Indeed in the 200 metres, held for the first time in a Games, she won by the largest margin ever in the sprints by man or woman, 0.7 seconds. She would surely additionally have won the long jump, had her husband and coach, Jan, not advised her to withdraw to preserve herself for the final of the hurdles, which took place in the afternoon after the long jump preliminaries. Aged 18, Fanny had competed at the Berlin Games in 1936, finishing sixth in the high jump and fifth in the sprint relay when the last German runner dropped the baton. She said the highlight of Berlin for her was getting the autograph of Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. They met again at the 1972 Games in Munich. "I said: 'I still have your autograph. I'm Fanny Blankers-Koen,' " she recalled. "He said: 'You don't have to tell me who you are, I know everything about you.' Isn't that incredible?

Jesse Owens knew who I was." Maintaining her fitness during the war, she was often competing against men, and set women's world records in high jump, long jump, hurdles and 100 metres. By the time of the London Games, having a boy of seven and girl of two, she had improved her 100m record to 11.5sec. On a wet track she took the 100m title in 11.9sec ahead of Dorothy Manley, of Britain. Blankers-Koen confessed to being exceedingly nervous before the hurdles final, holding Gardner in some awe. "I'd realised, warming up beforehand, that she was as nervous as I was," she recalled. "For the final I was drawn in the next lane, which was a help, but I had one of my worst starts and was a metre down by the first flight. But then I raced as never before, so fast that I was too close to the fifth flight.

From then on it was a struggle and I only just made it." Waiting for the announcement, the National Anthem sounded on the public address, and she thought she had lost, "but they were playing the anthem because the Royal Family had just arrived." Arriving home in Amsterdam she was greeted by a huge crowd and a horse-drawn carriage with four horses. A statue of her was erected in the city. Yet she soon retired to become a housewife, having broken 20 world records and captured 58 Dutch national titles. "These days everybody has their own sponsor," she said recently. "I think I had more fun." Sebastian Coe, the British Olympics runner, said: "As we salivate at the thought of bringing the Games back to London 64 years later, we have much to be grateful to the 'flying housewife' from Baarn.

She was in the vanguard of changing the perception of women in sport." 'The Flying Housewife' of the 1948 London Games | History | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use 'The Flying Housewife' of the 1948 London Games Voted female athlete of the 20th century, Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals while pregnant with her third child smithsonian.com July 31, 2012 Fanny Blankers-Koen, the “Flying Housewife,” wins the third of her four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics in London. Photo: Bettman/CORBIS The last time London hosted the Olympics, the scarred city hadn’t yet recovered from the ravages of World War II. In 1948, after a 12-year hiatus from the Games, the sporting world hadn’t recovered, either. Neither Germany nor Japan were invited, and the Soviet Union declined to participate, Stalin believing that sports had no place in communism. London built no new facilities or stadiums for what were called the “Austerity Games. ” Male athletes stayed in Royal Air Force barracks, while women were housed in college dormitories.

All were told to bring their own towels. With postwar rationing still in effect, there were immediate complaints about the British food. A Korean weightlifter lost 14 pounds while in England, and the Jamaicans were extremely displeased and “kicking about the poorly seasoned foods.” Rumors of food poisoning ran rampant, as numerous athletes suffered debilitating stomach pains, but British public relations officers ascribed the incidents to “nervousness,” noting that doctors had detected “nothing more than a mild digestive disorder.” Still, English athletes chose to consume unrationed whale meat, and American reporters who arrived in advance hoped Uncle Sam might send enough steaks, eggs, butter and ham for everyone. A 57-year-old gymnastics official from Czechoslovakia became the first Olympic political defection when she refused to return to her Communist bloc nation following the Games. There was a row when the International Swimming Federation declared that athletes from Northern Ireland could compete only for Great Britain, and the Irish withdrew from the swimming and diving competition in protest.

(They’d already lodged a protest when officials declared that the state be designated “Eire” rather than Ireland, as the team had wished.) As it turned out, Eire would win just one medal at the Games, when 69-year-old Letitia Hamilton picked up a bronze medal for her painting of the Meath Hunt Point-to-Point Races in the Olympic art competition . Still, the London Games managed to set an Olympic attendance record, and an unlikely Olympic star emerged. Fanny Blankers-Koen of Holland, 6 feet tall and 30 years old, was a “shy, towering, drably domesticated” straw-blonde mother of a 7-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter who talked of how she liked cooking and housekeeping. She also won four gold medals in track and field and became “as well known to Olympic patrons as King George of England.” Nicknamed the “ Flying Housewife ,” Blankers-Koen achieved this feat while pregnant with her third child.

Born Francina Elsje Koen on April 26, 1918, in Lage Vuursche, a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht, she demonstrated remarkable athletic abilities as a young child and ultimately settled on track and field after her swim coach advised her that the Netherlands was already loaded with talent in the pools. At 17 years old, Koen began competing in track events and set a national record in the 800-meter run; a year later she qualified in the trials for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin in both the high jump and the 4 x 100 relay. She attended the Games, and although she did not medal in her events, she did manage to meet and get an autograph from her hero, the African-American track star Jesse Owens , whose record four gold medals she would later match in London. The meeting was, she would later say, her most treasured Olympic memory. Fanny Blankers-Koen was voted female athlete of the century in 1999 by the International Association of the Athletics Federations.

Photo: Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid / NOS Fanny was just coming into her prime as a runner when she married her coach, Jan Blankers, in 1940. She’d won European titles and set multiple world records in the 80-meter hurdles, high jump and long jump. But because of the war, the Olympics were canceled that year and again in 1944. Still, she qualified to return to the Olympics, leaving her children behind in Amsterdam. “I got very many bad letters,” she recalled, “people writing that I must stay home with my children.” The British team manager, Jack Crump, took one look at Blankers-Koen and said she was “too old to make the grade.” Few knew it at the time, but she was already three months pregnant and training only twice a week in the summer leading up to competition. The Games began on July 28 under a sweltering heat wave, when King George VI opened the ceremonies at Wembley Stadium before more than 80,000 people.

The athletes entered the stadium, nation by nation, and toward the end of the pageant, the American team, dressed in blue coats, white hats, white slacks and striped neckties, received a tremendous and prolonged ovation for their efforts during the war. It was a moment that, one American reporter said, “provided one of the greatest thrills this reporter has had in newspaper work.” Blankers-Koen got off to a strong start in the 100-meter sprint, blowing away the field to capture her first gold medal, but despite being favored in her next event, the 80-meter hurdles, she was slow out of the blocks, bumped a hurdle and barely held on in a photo finish to win her second gold. Feeling the pressure, she burst into tears after one of her heats in the 200-meter event, complained of homesickness, and told her husband that she wanted to withdraw. In addition to hyping Blankers-Koen as the “Flying Housewife,” newspaper coverage of her exploits reflected the sexism of the time in other ways.

One reporter wrote that she ran “like she was chasing the kids out of the pantry.” Another observed that she “fled through her trial heats as though racing to the kitchen to rescue a batch of burning biscuits.” Her husband patiently talked to her about continuing, and Blankers-Koen reconsidered, regrouped, then set an Olympic record in the 200 meters on her way to winning her third gold medal of the Games. In her final event, she was to run the anchor leg in the 4 x 100 relay, but the Dutch team was panicked to learn, shortly before the finals, that Blankers-Koen was nowhere to be found. A shopping trip had delayed her arrival at the stadium. She finally made her way down to the muddy track in her bright orange shorts, and by the time she’d received the baton, the Dutch were in fourth place, well behind. But she came roaring toward the finish line, closed a four-meter gap and caught the lead runner to win the gold. Despite eclipsing Babe Didrikson ’s three Olympic medals at the Los Angeles Games in 1932—a performance that vaulted the American athlete into superstardom—Blankers-Koen is mostly forgotten today.

As the world record holder in both the high jump and long jump at the time, it’s possible she could have added two more gold medals in 1948, but Olympic rules allowed participation in only three individual events, and the Dutchwoman chose to run rather than jump. When she returned to her country, she received not millions of dollars worth of endorsement contracts, but a new bicycle. Statue of Fanny Blankers-Koen in Rotterdam. Photo: Ruud Zwart In 1972, she attended the Munich Games and met Jesse Owens once again. “I still have your autograph,” she told her hero. “I’m Fanny Blankers-Koen.” “You don’t have to tell me who you are,” Owens replied. “I know everything about you.” In 1999, she was voted female athlete of the 20th century by the International Association of Athletics Federations (Carl Lewis was voted the best male athlete). And yet Blankers-Koen was surprised. “You mean it is me who has won?” she asked. Yet despite her modesty and demure giggle, her biographer Kees Kooman portrays her as a deeply competitive athlete.

Fanny Blankers-Koen died in 2004 at the age of 85. In preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games, Transport for London created a commemorative “Olympic Legends Underground Map,” but among the more than 300 athletes listed, Fanny Blankers-Koen’s name was nowhere to be found. The agency has since acknowledged the “mistake” and promised to add her name on future printings. Sources Articles: “Eyes of World on Olympics,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 29, 1948. “Seldom Seen London Sun Fells Many, Wilts Others” Washington Post, July 30, 1948. “No Food Poisoning Among Olympic Stars,” Hartford Courant, August 8 1948. “Holland’s Fanny Would Have Won 5 Titles With Help From Olympic Schedule-Makers,” Washington Post, August 8, 1948. “Dutch Woman Wind Third Olympic Title,” Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1948.

“Athletics: Mums on the run: Radcliff can still rule world despite pregnant pause,” by Simon Turnbull, The Independent, October 21 2007. In 1948, “London Olympics provided different challenges,” by Bob Ryan, Boston Globe, July 27, 2012. “Fanny Blankers-Koen,” The Observer, February 3, 2002. “The 1948 London Olympics,” by Janie Hampton, August 15, 2011, Books: Kees Kooman, Fanny Blankers-Koen: De huisvrouw die kon vliegen, De Boekenmakers, 2012. No station for the flying housewife | News | Expatica the Netherlands No station for the flying housewife 3rd April 2012, 0 comments The Dutch Athletics Federation believes that it has just been a terrible mistake: for the duration of the 2012 Olympics, underground stations in London will also bear the name of Olympic medal winners, but one of the Netherlands' best-known athletes has been left off the list.

Dutch medal winners Leontien van Moorsel, Inge de Bruijn, Pieter van den Hoogenband, Stephan Veen and Anton Geesink have all been honoured but Britain's Olympic Committee has left four-time gold medallist Fanny Blankers-Koen off the list. Fanny Blankers-Koen was a remarkable athlete: she is best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She accomplished this amazing feat as a 30-year-old mother of two and it earned her the nickname of ‘the flying housewife'. She also did it at a time when women's athletics were at best disregarded and at worst denigrated. She also won five European titles and 58 Dutch titles. In 1999, she was voted female athlete of the century. The Dutch Athletics Federation has written to Lord Coe with a request to add Blankers-Koen to the honour roll of athletes who will have underground stations named for them during the London 2012 games.

A spokesperson for the Dutch athletics Federation said, "Changing the names of the underground stations during the Olympics is the perfect homage to those athletes who were such a huge influence on and who meant so much to the Olympic movement. We believe that Fanny Blankers-Koen is deserves this honour." jric ©Radio Netherlands Worldwide When the Flying Housewife Flew the Highest When the Flying Housewife Flew the Highest FACES IN THE CROWD 57 When the Flying Housewife Flew the Highest Despite homesickness, worry over her small children and the grim awareness of her advancing age, Fanny Blankers-Koen managed to take four gold Olympics in medals at the 1948 London View Cover Jan. 20, 1969 On July 29, 1948, the warmest day of a warm English summer, King George VI stood up in Wembley's Empire Stadium to announce, cautious of his stammer, "I proclaim open the Olympic Games of London." Some 6,000 athletes, from every major country except Russia, Germany and Japan, were waiting to compete. One of them was a Dutch mother with corn-colored hair named Mrs.

Francina Elsje Blankers-Koen (pronounced Koon). A distinguished athlete in her home country, Fanny Koen was known throughout much of Europe as "The Flying Housewife," and time and again her photograph had appeared in the press: pedaling toward practice with her children plopped in the basket of her bicycle; high-jumping, with the little ones playing in the pit below her. She trained twice a week ("between washing dishes and darning socks") and became, quite rightly, a symbol of the hope and sanity beginning to emerge from the ruins of World War II. This is an article from the Jan. 20, 1969 issue When Fanny and her husband-coach Jan Blankers traveled to London that summer, their children were left in Amsterdam with Fanny's father, who wished her goodby with the promise, "Win, and I will dance around the kitchen table." His daughter was entered in five Olympic events: the 100- and 200-meter dashes, the 80-meter hurdles, the 400-meter relay and the long jump. "I left out the high jump," recalls Mrs.

Blankers, who had tied for sixth place in that event at Berlin in 1936, "because I thought I might pull a muscle." The 100 meters was her first event. Fanny got through her heat and semifinal races with ease, leaving intact the Olympic record of 11.5 seconds set by Helen Stephens of the U.S. at Berlin. On the day of the finals, Monday, she awoke at 5 o'clock, peered out at London's damp, grimy weather, then went back to bed for another try at sleep. By race time, despite a needling rain, Fanny's nerves were settled. She beat the British girl, Dorothy Manley, by five feet, in 11.9 seconds, a respectable time considering the weather, and, for the first time in the Games, her number—692 —was hung at the top of the scoreboard. The English band broke, uncertainly, into Wilhelmus, the national anthem of The Netherlands. A Dutch radiocaster came up with his microphone.

"Poppa," Fanny said into it, "dance now around the kitchen table." Qualification for the long jump and the finals for the 80-meter hurdles were scheduled for the same day, and Mrs. Blankers was faced with a choice: should she try for both and maybe lose, or concentrate on just one? She chose the hurdles for the feminine reason that it was nicer, "nicer even than flat running, which can be boring." The Olympic record of 11.6 seconds was held by Italy's Trebisonda Valla. Mrs. Blankers' chief rival in London again was a British girl, the pretty young ballet teacher Maureen Gardner. Miss Gardner's arrival at the track was a psychological coup. As Mrs. Blankers tells it, "I saw she had brought her own hurdles. Any athlete who carries her own hurdles around must really be top-class." Nevertheless, the un-psyched Fanny won her heat handily while the English girl hit a hurdle and barely qualified for the finals in hers. Rain fell all through that night and on through the following morning. It was still prancing in the puddles when the girls arrived at the track for the finals. Mrs. Blankers had spent a restless night.

She ate no breakfast. A letter from Amsterdam said the children missed her. She ate no lunch. She refused to sign autographs. But at the track her husband gathered her wits with a neat, five-word crack. "Fanny," he said, "you are too old." Miss Gardner was 19. The rivals drew adjacent lanes, which suited Mrs. Blankers; from there she could keep an eye on the youngster. When called to their marks they crouched together at the starting line; when told to get set they rose on their fingertips. Then an odd thing happened. Or didn't happen. The pistol didn't go off. Then it did. Mrs. Blankers' rhythm was upset. She got away a split stride behind the English girl and followed her over the first hurdle. By the second one she had drawn even; then, according to films, she fell fractionally behind, only to regain the lead. The two were legging it spike to spike for the fifth hurdle, where Mrs. Blankers took off late. She hit the hurdle. Now she recalls: "What happened after that was a blurred memory. My style went to pieces, and I staggered in like a drunkard." What happened after that was a nightmare.

Mrs. Blankers had felt the tape drag across her forehead yet, through the corner of one "drunkard's" eye she saw not only the English girl but the great young Australian, Shirley Strickland, as well. It appeared a triple dead heat. The runners waited, shambling about, while the judges studied the photographs of the finish. The band suddenly erupted into God Save the King, and Mrs. Blankers' heart slumped. The band was not saluting a winner, however, but King George, who had just entered the royal box. At length the winning time was announced: 11.2 seconds, a new world and Olympic record—set identically by Miss Gardner and Mrs. Blankers. The number 692 at last appeared at the top of the scoreboard. Gold medal No. 2 for the Dutch woman. Dutifully, the band played Wilhelmus again. The next day was torture for Fanny. It started, characteristically, with a gray, rainy dawn. At her mailbox, where yesterday she had found a lonesome message from her children, today Fanny found nothing at all.

Ahead lay the everlasting heats and semifinals of the 200 meters, at that time the longest race for women in the Games. Mrs. Blankers rallied and won beautifully, she thought, but her time, when announced, was slow. She broke down and wept in her dressing room. Her husband was summoned. She said she'd had enough and wanted to go home. He said nothing. "If you do not want to go on," he told her at last, "you must not. But later perhaps you will be sorry." Fanny went on. She won her semifinal that afternoon and on the following day, in rain, of course, drew the lane to her liking, inside. From there she could see her opponents strung out before her. The Briton to beat today was the army officer, Audrey Williamson. Fanny took the lead much earlier than she had planned, at mid-point, and without the zest of a chase her time was well beyond the world record of 23.6 seconds set years before by the mighty Polish runner S. Walasiewicz. The English girl, to be sure, came second.

"For once," sighed The Times, which had a wryer touch then than it does now, "the greatest all-round woman athlete yet seen at an Olympic Games did not break a record." Which was reasonable, the paper pointed out, since women had never run the distance before at an Olympics. To win her fourth gold medal, Fanny needed help from her countrymen. Her relay team was a good one, plagued with one problem: Fanny was too fast. In practice through the summer, she had been unable to break the habit of running away from her teammate at the baton exchange. Still, it was reckoned that from her anchor position Mrs. Blankers could easily make up as much as a four-yard deficit; anything less than that given to her by her teammates was money in the bank. Over the first three legs of the race in London, however, it became clear that the Dutch girls had overdrawn their account. When she was passed the stick, Mrs. Blankers was five yards behind the leaders. She tells the story with awesome simplicity: "I had to guard against sprinting away from my runner, so I was slow getting away.

I overtook very quickly the Danish girl, then the English girl and at the very end I caught the Australian girl." Back home in Amsterdam the Flying Housewife, having flown higher and faster than ever before, was drawn through the streets in an open coach behind four white horses. A candy bar was named after her (without endorsement fees) and a gladiolus and a rose. And for the next four years she continued winning prizes as the outstanding woman track-and-field athlete of her time. The holder of seven world titles and four gold medals, Fanny might well have repeated her whole act in Helsinki in 1952 at the age of 34 were it not for a silly ailment—an annoying and very painful boil that kept her out. In this Article BBC SPORT | Athletics | Winner against all odds Winner against all odds Blankers-Koen dies at 85 Fanny Blankers-Koen defied the critics in characteristic, gritty style when she ran into the record books at the 1948 Olympics. The Dutch sprinter was an unlikely heroine of the London Games, lining up alongside younger athletes as a 30-year-old mother of two. Some dismissed her chances on the grounds of age.

Others knocked Blankers-Koen for neglecting her children and her household duties. But all detractors were proved wrong on the Wembley track, where she became the only female athlete to win four gold medals at a single Olympics and set a glowing example for women around the world. Blankers-Koen's talent and determination prevailed in the 100 metres, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4x100m relay. And, after eight gruelling days, she left London with the moniker "Flying Housewife" forever linked to her name. There had been little to hint at Blankers-Koen's epic athletic future in her early life.

BLANKERS-KOEN (1918-2004) 1936: Made Dutch 4x100m team at Berlin Olympics 1938: Wins European bronze at 100m 1946: Takes European gold in 80m hurdles, weeks after giving birth 1948: Wins four gold medals at London Olympics 1952: Appears at her third Olympics Born Francina Koen in Baarn on 26 April, 1918, she adopted swimming as her first sport, before switching to the track relatively late, at 17. By 1936, she had been encouraged to enter the 1936 Olympic trials by her coach and soon-to-be husband Jan Blankers. And she went from strength to strength, qualifying for the 4x100m relay squad, which finished fifth at the Berlin Games. Blankers-Koen's first taste of individual success came two years later at the European Championships, where she won a bronze at 100m.

But she was robbed of further medals when the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled due to the Second World War. Many thought her chance had passed. You mean it is me who has won - I must say I am surprised Blanker-Koen on her "athlete of the century" award But in 1946, just six weeks after giving birth to her first child, the Dutchwoman hinted at her resilience and versatility by striking European gold in the 80m hurdles. Blankers-Koen was the holder of six world records going into the London Games. And - incredibly - she might well have left it with six golds to her name had not a schedule clash deprived her of the chance to compete in the long and high jumps. As it was, she had to settle for four titles and the modest gift of a bicycle when she returned home to Holland. Blankers-Koen set 20 world records during her glittering career. But she insisted that her most treasured memory was meeting Jesse Owens. Her biggest accolade, however, came long after she had hung up her running spikes.

Blankers-Koen beat off all competition to be crowned female athlete of the 20th century by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Not bad going for a "flying housewife". 120 years, 120 stories (Part 18) : "The Flying Housewife" wins four golds in London 1948 Facebook Twitter Subscribe There has been multiple instances of supermoms gracing every part of the world, but when it comes to Olympics, one can never forget the odds a Dutch housewife and a mother of two defied, in order to win four gold medals in the 1948 London Olympics. In its 120 years’ of history, no woman athlete holds the record of winning multiple gold medals in athletics in a single edition of the game. Except for “the flying housewife” – the legendary Fanny Blankers-Koen. Born as Francina Elsje Koen, her diverse talent in sports was well-spotted by her father, a Dutch farmer who competed in the discus and shot. He encouraged her daughter to pursue athletics. Each day, she cycled a total of 36 miles back and forth to practise at the Amsterdam Dames’ Athletic Club.

She made her Olympic debut at the age of 18 in Berlin, in 1936. Failing to win any medals, her highlight for the game was getting an autograph of her idol, the track and field star Jesse Owens . “When I met him again in Munich at the 1972 Olympics I said, “I still have your autograph, I’m Fanny Blankers-Koen.” He said, “You don’t have to tell me who you are, I know everything about you.” Isn’t that incredible? Jesse Owens knew who I was.” Embed from Getty Images Fanny Blankers-Koen was a multi-talented sportswoman. She competed in 100m, 200m, Hurdles, 4 x 100 m relay, long jump and high jump. In 1948, she was the current world record holder for the 100m, the hurdles, the long jump and the high jump. The Olympics’ rule that an athlete could enter a maximum of three individual events meant Blankers-Koen was forced to forgo the high jump and long jump, despite being the current world record holder.

London Olympics, 1948 By the time the 1948 London Olympics began, Fanny married her coach Jan Blankers and is a mother of two children. Nobody counted on a 30-year-old mother from the Netherlands named Fanny Blankers-Koen. Women competing after giving birth – and leaving their rightful place in the home to do so – were unheard of. “I got very many bad letters, people writing that I must stay home with my children and that I should not be allowed to run on a track with – how do you say it? – short trousers,” she told the New York Times in 1982. “One newspaperman wrote that I was too old to run, that I should stay at home and take care of my children. When I got to London, I pointed my finger at him and I said: ‘I show you.'” Embed from Getty Images And she quite certainly did. She won the 100m race with a record time of 11.9 seconds on a wet track. In the 80m hurdles, she faced a difficult challenge from Maureen Gardner, who was also coached by Jan Blankers.

Despite having a not-so-overwhelming start, she paced up to finish almost simultaneously with Maureen. Only after examining the finishing photo was Blankers-Koen declared the winner, however both received the same time of 11.2 seconds. After the first two gold medals, she broke down because of homesickness. After a long talk with her husband, she eased through the semi-finals of 200m and won the inaugural Olympic 200 m race for women in 24.4 seconds, seven tenths of a second ahead of runner up Audrey Williamson – still the largest winning margin in an Olympic 200m Final. She was the last runner for his country in the relay race and took over the baton in the 3rd place. However, “the flying housewife” almost flew through the track with a lightning fast speed, winning the gold in his last two strides to complete a haul of four gold medals in a single Olympic. Had it not been for the Olympic rules, she could have won a couple more as the winners of the both long jump and high jump won the events with distances far short of the world records set by Fanny Blankers-Koen.

Embed from Getty Images Legacy Her Olympic victories are credited with helping to eliminate the belief that age and motherhood were a barrier to success in women’s sport. Before her four golds, female athletes were never seriously considered and were looked down upon in a condescending way. The world dubbed her as the “The Flying Housewife”, “The Flying Dutchmam” and “Amazing Fanny”. She was showered with praise and gifts which included a bicycle so she could “go through life at a slower pace” and “need not run so much”. She served as the leader of the Dutch Athletic team from 1958 to 1968. Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, an annual international athletics event, were established in 1981. In 1999, she was voted “Female Athlete of the Century” by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Question: Who in athletics was known as the "Flying Housewife?
Answer: Fanny Blankers-Koen